'This worthy olde writer': Pericles and other Gowers, 1592-1640
- Author/Editor
- Cooper, Helen
- Title
- 'This worthy olde writer': Pericles and other Gowers, 1592-1640
- Published
- Cooper, Helen. "'This worthy olde writer': Pericles and other Gowers, 1592-1640." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 99-113.
- Review
- Discusses the appearance of Gower the poet in Robert Greene's "Greenes Vision" of 1594 and in Shakespeare's "Pericles" (1611), and the borrowings from CA in Shakespeare's earlier "Comedy of Errors" and in a 1640 pamphlet entitled "A Certain Relation of the Hog-faced Gentlewoman, called Tannekin Skinker" (in which the example of Florent is narrated in order to suggest the possibility of an equally happy metamorphosis for the unfortunate young woman of the title). In Greene's work, Chaucer and Gower are each called upon to tell stories in which the issue of the moral value of literature becomes entangled with the issue of the moral dangers posed by the beauty of the women in their tales. The author awards the prize--for the uprightness of both tale and character--to Gower. Cooper has much of interest to say about how each of these works perpetuated Gower's reputation both as moralist and as storyteller. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1]
- Date
- 2004
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
- Confessio Amantis